Site owners aren’t born yesterday, they know that many of the comments on their sites are there partly for self-promotion. However if the spam comment is of the flavour “acceptable” then Akismet, the site owner and most importantly the other readers will accept it. So, just what is acceptable spam?

Despite Word popping green and red squiggly lines all over my copy and despite my best efforts to go back and correct them, mistakes get through. It’s not Words fault that they get through, it’s mine…
You would think with major flaws like this I would spot them as I read through the copy. Yet somehow when I read it there seems to be a part of my brain that runs ahead and corrects these blunders…

“These posts come from top sources, so I should be treating the advice as gospel….”
“A platform is built upon pleasing your fans and the new fans that they bring to you. A platform is not about friends, peer writers, family, followers, FB friends, they all are platform irrelevant. A effective platform is a collection of people who love your work.”

I have to say that I was rather naïve in the past. I thought whatever writing talent I had would be instantly recognized by the “professionals in the field”…
The furthest I got with EyeLeash was a discussion with an editor for 6 months…
I only realized (once I tried it out myself) that self-publishing nowadays is POD (print-on-demand) – this means little, or no costs upfront…
So in June 2009, I finally decided to self-publish my debut novel. My praises for it were instantaneous.

The Proust questionnaire was a questionnaire that Proust asked himself a number of times throughout his life. He filled it in to gain a clearer understanding of himself. But here is a questionnaire where you can really KNOW your character. You can have a two way conversation with him before you write your first line.

You don’t have to read about the craft of writing for very long before the sage advice to keep a writer’s journal appears. It’s good advice, often handed down from the writing gods. So do you? Do you have the wisdom to use one? Or do you find them troublesome?